Welding Tips and Tricks

What are you guys using? Been looking at a Surfox set-up since it is more environmentally friendly and I can use it inside of the food plant I work in...the old stuff I have used in the past required a lot of ventilation.

http://www.surfox.com/

I use the "redneck" version of the product you mentioned !( and it works fine ) - the process usually requires 25 > 30 volts AC ( though a little higher does'nt seem to hurt ) - I have used an old 24volt battery start/ charger wired to bypass the rectifier & a very old 140 amp buzz box with a very low 40volt OCV as a power source - what ever you use it just requires a wand connected that uses an absorbent pad or conductive brush - I've not found the brushes at an affordable price so I use a pad - similar to the one pictured in your link - I use the 2" wide exhaust heat wrap tape from my local boat supply - the electrolyte is just dilute phosphoric acid which is not too nasty in use - does'nt give off much fumes & is easily washed off - obviously the manufactured models are all set up ready to go but ( at least in the UK ) are stupidly over priced - much like tungsten grinders - it would'nt take much to make one up - but so far there's not been much discussion here on the forum - not sure why.

Rick_H wrote:What are you guys using? Been looking at a Surfox set-up since it is more environmentally friendly and I can use it inside of the food plant I work in...the old stuff I have used in the past required a lot of ventilation.

http://www.surfox.com/

How much those machines cost today?

We use a Champion passivator at work. Quite a bit more heavy duty than the surfox. Tried one of those, they tended to go through the pads rather quickly, and the electrode was a lot smaller. My compamy got a big job making HVAC units for a micro chip company, to supply the air for clean rooms. Needless to say there is tons of 316 S.S. in those units. One base section has 9 drain pans 175" long X 30"-40" wide. The pans all overlap and customer spec. is all stainless welds need to be passivated. We currently have two machines, they do an awesome job. Took me a long time to convince my boss to let me tig those seams. We used to mig them but they never cleaned up all the way, they had a faint black line in them. I'm guessing from where the wire went into the puddle Mig welds also took about an hour and half to clean each seam. When I tigged them it took me 25 min to clean all 8 seams and they were perfectly clean, no dark spots at all Downside is I believe those baby's go for $1500 - $2000 apiece

Do you have a web address for Champion? I did a Google search and didn't see anything for passivation equipment.

The Surfox unit I was looking at was $3000.00

Don't have a web address . If I can remember I'll talk to our lws rep that we got them from and see if I can get something you can look up. He should stop in tomorrow.

Rick_H wrote:Do you have a web address for Champion? I did a Google search and didn't see anything for passivation equipment.

The Surfox unit I was looking at was $3000.00

The name on the passivator is capital not champion. Unlike the DOS XX GUY... Sorry my bad Capital weldcleaners.com should get you there. Brain is a bit scrambled had to take a CWB/AWS D1.1 yesterday must have fried my brain too

jimbob wrote:

Rick_H wrote:Do you have a web address for Champion? I did a Google search and didn't see anything for passivation equipment.

The Surfox unit I was looking at was $3000.00

The name on the passivator is capital not champion. Unlike the DOS XX GUY... Sorry my bad Capital weldcleaners.com should get you there. Brain is a bit scrambled had to take a CWB/AWS D1.1 yesterday must have fried my brain too

no problem buddy I appreciate all the help. I take my D 1.1 in 2 weeks and ASME 1x in a month

Jimbob thanks or the info, I got approval to purchase a cleaner and I'm setting up a demo for the powers that be... Pricing was good as our current MRO supplier is a dealer for them

No problem Glad to help. Hope it works out well for Ya! Let me know how it goes